Im Zuge der Umsetzung von Basel II ringen deutsche Banken darum, ein möglichst effizientes Rating-System aufzubauen. Erklärtes Ziel ist es, in Zukunft Kreditvergabe und -konditionen vor allem auf der Basis von Rating-Kennziffern zu treffen. Im Folgenden wird anhand von anonymisierten...

Verflechtungen zwischen Banken und Politikern werden hier am Beispiel ukrainischer Geschäftsbanken analysiert. Es zeigt sich, dass die "Nähe zur Politik" tendenziell einen dämpfenden Effekt auf die Entwicklung der Zinsmargen und einen positiven Effekt auf die Veränderung der...

Frauen gründen im Vergleich zu Männern seltener Unternehmen, ihre Gründungen fallen kleiner aus und sie wählen eine andere Finanzierungsstruktur. Es existieren jedoch nur wenige Informationen über die Hintergründe dieser Unterschiede. Insbesondere für Europa gibt es kaum gesicherte...

The paper investigates young firms' choice of capital source. Our theoretical model hypothesizes a positive (negative) relation between riskiness of the project (price of venture capital) and receiving informed equity. We test our predictions by employing a unique data set collected by KfW...

This paper studies gender discrimination against entrepreneurs by financial institutions. Based on the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS) that covers firms in several countries of Western Europe as well as in the transition countries of Eastern Europe, our analysis...

We estimate firms' cash flow sensitivity of cash to empirically test how the financial system's structure and activity level influence their financial constraints. For this purpose we merge Almeida, Campello and Weisbach (2004), a pathbreaking new design for evaluating a firm's financial...

In this paper we investigate the link between entrepreneurship and financial constraints. We develop a dynamic partial equilibrium model of an individual utility maximization that predicts that the person is more likely to start her business when financial constraints are eased. We test this...

Using a unique, large panel of German firms, we examine whether participation in business groups reduces the sensitivity of investment to cash flow. The main finding is that the reduction in the sensitivity is small for small firms and negligible for medium and large firms. We argue that by...

Using data from Germany this paper examines the direct effect of non-financial firms' use of short-term versus long-term liabilities. We develop a structural model of a firm's value maximization problem that predicts that profitability of the firm will change if firms alter their use of...

In this paper we investigate whether small-scale businesses face financial constraints that affect their survival. We develop a model of moral hazard in which financial constraints arise endogenously. The model predicts that higher private assets relax financial constraints and have a positive...